Science of the Times: A bird's-eye view of the link to dinosaurs

By
Alex Rose, Delaware County Daily Times

Monday, March 10, 2014

I’ve never trusted birds. They’re just, you know, spooky. Those reptilian eyes, that perpetual frown. Don’t get me wrong — they’re magnificent in flight and watching something like a hawk hunt is amazing. They just give me the willies in person.

So it wasn’t terribly surprising for me to learn that birds descended from dinosaurs. All the pieces clicked: The sharp talons and unreadable expressions and “Come at me bro!” dispositions.

But it turns out there is more to those eyes than just the glimmer of a former apex predator. Researchers have discovered that the five different types of cones in chicken retinas that help perceive light and color are arranged in something called “disordered hyperuniformity,” allowing the retina to possess the qualities of both a crystal and a liquid, which has never been observed before in a living thing.

At first blush, the five layers of cones appear to be scattered somewhat haphazardly, according to the paper published by Salvatore Torquato and Joseph Corbo in the journal Physical Review E.

Upon further inspection, however, the researchers found that each type of cone is arranged in its own layer and each cone in that layer is spaced uniformly from others of its type. Think of it like a bunch of pick-up sticks of varying colors. Now put down a layer of blues in something like the shape of a bicycle wheel, then add a layer of reds and so on. Now imagine all of this is suspended in three dimensional space rather than just lying flat on your floor. Looking straight down, it might appear to be a random arrangement, but is actually a highly structured affair, all of which is compressed into a single tissue layer of the chicken’s retina.

Torquato and Corbo believe this arrangement could be copied by engineers and applied to optical circuits to only let in certain wavelengths of the operator’s choosing. I’m picturing something along the lines of the Predator helmet from the second film.

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Meanwhile, a group of chemists, molecular biologists and techies are looking to bring another fictional device to the real world. QuantuMDx is currently gathering funds to develop its prototype Handheld DNA Lab that would be able to accurately diagnose things like cancer, TB, influenza and other ailments in less than 15 minutes.

In other words, they’re making a Tricorder from “Star Trek.”

This device would cut out the hassle and time of sending samples off to a lab, which could be especially beneficial in third-world countries where fast treatment of disease is often the difference between life and death.

That’s why QuantuMDx is setting its sights first on malaria, which kills more than 1 million people worldwide each year and 3,000 children per day, according to UNICEF.

The 35-member team says it has already successfully carried out diagnostic testing and is ready to bring the portable lab into the field. The company is soliciting design and naming ideas from donors at its Indigogo site while collecting funds toward a $50,000 goal. That money will go toward developing a prototype for the device and clinical trials in Africa to help test hundreds or thousands of kids for malaria. Any money raised above the $50,000 goal will pay for additional testing.

And they just might have some new threats to human health to diagnose in the coming years, warns Jean-Michel Claverie, of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix-Marseille University.

According to a paper published last week by Claverie and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers exposed some hapless amoebas to a 30,000-year-old permafrost core sample obtained from Siberia. The amoebas were soon infected with an as yet unseen form of giant DNA virus.

This new strain, dubbed Pithovirus sibericum, is thankfully harmless to humans, but Claverie said there might be other ancestral pathogens lurking in permafrost that could pose a danger if they are revived.

As polar regions continue to thaw from climate change and industrial endeavors, these ancient viruses could reawaken to a population wholly unprepared for their arrival. So perhaps global warming will be the death of us yet, just not in the way we expected.

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And finally, just a quick note that the revamped “Cosmos” hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson made its television debut Sunday on Fox.

This update to Carl Sagan’s series from the 1980s, dubbed “Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey,” also runs Mondays on the National Geographic Channel, in case you miss the first airing.

It’s much more flashy than the original, but none the less interesting and informative for its blend of live action, CGI and animation. Far from it, the first in the 13-episode series was a gorgeously rendered look at our “cosmic address” and put into perspective the entirety of human history as little more than a blink in the eye of the universe.

My only misgiving about the introductory episode was, surprisingly, Tyson himself, whose personality is entirely too dour for a show aimed at igniting the imaginations of the next generation.

Still, several of my friend’s kids, ages 3 to 11, were reportedly captivated and had many, many questions afterward, so I’ll call that a win.

Alex Rose covers the Delaware County Courthouse for the Daily Times. Follow him on Twitter at @arosedelco. Check out his blog at delcoscience.blogspot.com. Email him at delcoscience@gmail.com. His column appears every Tuesday.